Counterpoint
by Eponymous
Summary: One of Eboshi's greatest enemies prepares for battle...


Counterpoint  
by Eponymous  
  
  
I used to love to fish.  
  
That woman is insane.  
  
When I was younger, before I had the stature I do today, I'd spend my summers  
wading in the river shallows, snatching and spearing them. Some years there   
were so many I couldn't see my feet through the water. Other years their   
numbers were few, and I had to hunt carefully. It was during that time that   
I honed the skills that served me well when the time came to lead my people,   
and leave such boyhood activities behind.  
  
The first time I heard of her, she seemed a curiosity. Certainly, her   
ability to free herself from bondage was impressive, but her judgement   
afterwards was lacking. She had managed to overthrow her masters and take   
their earnings, enough perhaps to build a true society out of the earnings   
of a worthless and corrupt one. Instead she chose to found her city with a   
group of secondhand prostitutes and would-be miners. She was building an   
empire on a foundation of sand.  
  
The people of my village lacked leadership. I gave them that leadership.   
They needed a cause, an ideal to look up to. I became that ideal. They   
needed a spokesman, and I spoke well. I forged our society out of ashes and   
made it into a city of iron. But I lacked the presumption to actually name   
it such.  
  
When I first heard the name, I thought her egotistical. I later learned she   
was simply unimaginative. It seemed she'd picked up a few things in her   
travels under the yoke of her former masters. Ways of harnessing the iron   
into devices the likes of which this land had never seen. Weapons that   
turned a tidy profit for her.  
  
Killing is a necessity once one's society reaches a certain point. I had   
prepared our army many years before the first attacks came. They heard of   
our newfound prosperity and they attacked. We defended ourselves. They   
plotted against us. We launched pre-emptive strikes. They began to amass   
enough power to one day threaten us. We absorbed them before they could do   
any such thing. We grew more prosperous. They heard of our newfound   
prosperity and they attacked. We defended ourselves. And so on.  
  
She squandered her profits the same way she had her initial earnings,   
compounding her foolishness with cruelty. She took in the diseased and   
dying and put them to work, keeping them alive and in agony to labor for her   
benefit rather than freeing them from their misery. It was, I think, at this  
point that I began to truly hate her.  
  
There are very few who suffer in our society. The diseased often ask to be   
released from their pain, and we oblige them. Those who would prefer to live  
are allowed to leave, and die somewhere far from here where the infection   
cannot spread. The harem girls are also treated well, as their role in   
satisfying our soldiers' needs makes it imperative they remain in good health.  
They are housed and clothed better than the soldiers' wives, though neither  
is forced strain their bodies in blistering heat for hours on end.  
  
Her iron supply began to grow scarce, and her economy weak. She lacked both   
the money to feed her people and the foresight to purchase any land on which   
to grow crops of her own. Her society seemed certain to collapse. And then   
she made her most outrageous move, and confirmed her madness to me.  
  
In all the years my people have lived here we have had no conflagration with   
the creatures of the forest. On occasion some of us have strayed into their   
territory, and we have made due reparations to them for this transgression.   
We have endeavored to remember our place in the order of things.  
  
She attacked and massacred the Nago tribe merely to finance her own   
self-destructive endeavor. Worse yet, she drove what few survivors she left   
into a frenzy. They attacked any human they could find. We defended   
ourselves.  
  
My people have worked long and hard for the society we have. We've labored   
to grow our crops. We lived at peace with the gods of our land and revered   
them.  
  
Her band of society's cast-offs has done nothing but steal and defile. There   
is no cripple they will not exploit, no woman they will not force into hard   
labor, no creature they will not slaughter, no holy land they will not   
desecrate. They are worse than the very slave-traders that she once served.  
  
I used to love to fish. Over the years, I came to learn the cycles by which   
their numbers waxed and waned year by year. This was to be a very good year   
for them indeed.  
  
When she has used up the iron in her own land, she moves into the forest,   
and massacres the gods that live there for her convenience. Her people do   
not mind. As long as she feeds them, they follow her without question.   
When she has used up the iron in the forest, where then will she go from   
there? If she can unseat the gods a simple city, even ours, should prove no   
great challenge.  
  
I had not been to the riverbank in some time. I went alone. The water   
seemed far darker than I recalled it being, but I attributed this to the   
faulty memory of youth.  
  
She claims in her madness that I want her iron. Perhaps there was a   
miscommunication, perhaps it is simply a story invented to turn her people   
against mine. This much is true: when I stop her I will take it, and use it   
as benefits my people. But more important is that I stop her expansion, her   
reckless consumption benefiting no one and threatening ourselves. When the   
iron runs out, her city will die. The iron *will* run out. Her city *will*   
die. The question is merely who will die with it.  
  
We are not without mercy, or strategy. When an enemy proves too strong to  
be defeated in battle early on, we attempt to prevent a long and bloody   
conflict by sending messengers to negotiate. Often they are accepted and   
terms of surrender are set. Only once has anyone been foolish enough to   
turn them away without so much as a word. Only once has anyone been foolish   
enough to fire upon them as they did so.  
  
She has many allies now, my agents report. No doubt more fools pulled in by   
her transitory wealth. Nonetheless, tomorrow I will send my entire force   
against her. There is no other option. Not a single soldier will be spared.  
We will overtake her village and burn it to the ground. We will destroy her  
ironworks and smash the crumbling foundation she has laid. We can wait no   
longer. I know this now.  
  
I went to the riverbank. The water was darker than I remember it. It stank   
of metal and decay. There were few fish visible in the murky waters. All of  
them were dead.  
  
She kills gods. She rapes their kingdoms. She surrounds herself with the   
weak and the dying, forces them into servitude or seduces them with wealth   
that comes at the expense of the very water we drink and the crops we would   
grow with it. Unless she is stopped she will continue to do so until the iron  
runs out and this land is destroyed. She must be stopped.  
  
I used to love to fish.  
  
That woman is insane.  
  
  
  
Author's Notes  
I was at a showing of Princess Mononoke and one of my friends pointed out that   
the only truly evil character in the whole movie is Lord Asano, or as we   
affectionately called him, Lord Not Appearing In This Film. I figured this  
was because if we did see him, he'd have the same complicated motivations as   
everyone else, and his own reasons for his attack on Iron Town. So here they   
are. 


End file.
